‘American Horror Story’ Renewed for Fourth Installment by FX

“American Horror Story” will continue to scare FX viewers, as the net announced today that it has ordered a fourth installment of the franchise from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk.

The next miniseries in the “AHS” franchise has yet to be named, but will be comprised of 13 hours of scary programming and debut in 2014. 20th Century Fox TV will produce the fourth run of the series.

“Put simply, Ryan Murphy is a master television producer,” said John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks and FX Prods. “Time and time again he reinvents the form. What he, co-creator Brad Falchuk and their producers Dante Di Loreto, Tim Minear, Jennifer Salt, James Wong, Brad Buecker, Jessica Sharzer, Douglas Petrie, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Alexis Martin Woodall and the entire production team and cast responsible for the American Horror Story franchise have done is nothing short of extraordinary. Every year, they create a riveting and brilliant new miniseries. AHS: Coven is the best yet, and I have no doubt that the next installment will be even better.”

The third season of “AHS” — “Coven” — has topped its predecessors, 2011’s “Murder House” and 2012’s “Asylum,” handily in ratings. Witch-centric “AHS: Coven” currently averages 7.74 million viewers on Wednesday nights, and the October premiere of “Coven” was the highest-rated episode of the entire “AHS” franchise, with 5.5 million viewers in its premiere timeslot, 7.8 million with an encore telecast taken into account.

Nine episodes of “AHS: Coven” remain, and the finale for this season is scheduled for Jan. 29.